Trapped nerve? Not as common as you think…Easily cured by an OSTEOPATH!

All pain that we feel is reported back to us through the nervous system. Whether it is a muscle, joint, ligament, disc, nerve, bone, blood vessel or anything else in the human body, it is the nervous system that tells us it is painful. The only true ‘pain free’ tissue is the brain itself, yet a common diagnosis of sharp pain is a ‘trapped nerve’. The Sports Injuries Specialist – Registered Osteopath – Harrow Osteopaths, Wembley Osteopaths will be able to expertly diagnose the problem and tell you exactly what is going on. Trapped nerves are not that common with only approximately 5% being the cause of limb pain. Even then, 95% include a preceding history of spinal pain before the development of any limb pain. It is indeed very

convenient and dramatic to describe something as a ‘trapped nerve’, but often it is merely an uneducated guess overlying the true essence of the problem. A trapped nerve will give symptoms that include numbness, pins and needles and weakness. Bear in mind that this must be a true weakness and not just weak because it is painful. These are very different considerations and very important to understand. ‘Nerve pain’ is quite specific. It will normally radiate along a leg or an arm as a ‘flash’ of pain, no wider than one or two centimetres and then it will go away just as quickly. If you compress the nerve for a period of time, you will tend to feel numbness, tingling or weakness +/- pain.

Osteopathy and Acupuncture are both highly effective tools of releasing a trapped nerve used by The Sports Injuries Specialist – Registered Osteopath – Harrow Osteopaths, Wembley Osteopaths. It may even be that Orthotics are required to correct a bio-mechanical problem. Sharp pain that you feel when you move your neck or back may not be a trapped nerve. If the pain is local to the spine and does not follow the above pattern, it is by far and away most likely to be an acutely inflamed spinal joint as nerve pain is very rarely confined to the spine. The majority of limb pain is not due to a ‘trapped nerve’ either. The cause is usually very much musculoskeletal or ‘somatic’, which can be caused by inflammation or swelling of a nerve or other structure, rather than, e.g. a ‘trapped sciatic nerve’.